Actor Esai Morales (La Bamba) might be playing the main villain in next year’s sequel Mission: Impossible 7, but it was on his Instagram page where the Puerto Rican star seemed to be getting an early start on the role. He caused a stir with some of his fans who weren’t quite sure what to make of his comments on the COVID-19 vaccine.
Earlier this month, Morales posted a list of phone numbers to major airlines and hotels and urged his 84,000 Instagram followers to call them and let them know they were not in favor of the U.S. government making it mandatory for citizens to prove they have received a COVID-19 vaccine by showing a “vaccine passport.”
The White House has since announced that there would be no “federal vaccinations database” or a “federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”
The pushback against a “vaccine passport,” however, wasn’t what disappointed many of Morales’ fans since that idea seemed to be controversial on both sides of the aisle. Instead, what raised eyebrows were the claims he started spreading in the comments section where he argued with followers about the dangers of taking a COVID-19 vaccine or, as he referred to it, “DNA modifying experimental therapy.”
“The haters have no idea how the human body and [its] immune system works and so they worship at the altar of ‘authority figures’ who are easily compromised and installed to serve agendas in major institutions,” Morales wrote. “Those who’ve been hurt by this experiment have no legal recourse to sue the makers of their biological weapons.”
Morales continued to post conspiracy theories that Bill Gates, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were “suppressing real and effective treatments” for COVID-19. When someone challenged him to believe the science, Morales replied, “There’s a difference between $cience and science.”